


Failure

by aeternamente



Series: Time and Space [2]
Category: Nothing Much to Do
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 18:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2078070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeternamente/pseuds/aeternamente
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right now, Pedro was just feeling like a general failure of a human being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Failure

**Author's Note:**

> Originally entitled "Time and Space" on my tumblr. Re-titled because I thought "Time and Space" was better for the series (which may or may not be added to).

"Okay, game plan: You, me, Claud. Your place. After school, yeah?"

Pedro pushed a hand through his hair for about the fiftieth time that day. “Yeah, okay,” was his unenthusiastic response to Ben’s query.

"Well I mean if you don’t want to—"

"No, yeah, it’s fine," Pedro insisted. It had been a long day and he was dead tired and in this really weird place in his head, but he really didn’t need to go home to an empty room and mull over… things. That wouldn’t accomplish anything other than making him more frustrated with… things. So even though it didn’t seem terribly appealing at the moment, spending some time just goofing off with Ben and Claud might be just what he needed right now, to shake him out of this funk.

Because right now, he was just feeling like a general failure of a human being.

Part of it was the failure of his whole “Team Love Gods” ploy. Things had seemed promising at first. Ben had completely taken the bait, and even Bea seemed to be progressing toward a slow change of heart. But the real master stroke was going to be the History project.

Hero, who was doing an independent study as assistant to the History teacher, was given the task of randomly generating the partner assignments for the next project. Ms. Lewis would never know that the list from which she called the names “Beatrice Duke and Benedick Hobbes” was not quite as random as she’d assumed.

Nobody expected Bea’s abject refusal to work with Ben. When that shit went down, Pedro, Ursula, and Hero, the three “Love Gods” in the room, kept looking from Beatrice back to each other, wide eyed and dismayed, but completely unable to prevent Bea’s partner reassignment (Ms. Lewis was never one to force a partner assignment if there was an objection, a fact that usually made her a favorite among students).

And on top of all of that, Bea ended up partnered with Pedro, and he was stuck with an almost daily reminder of how much he really sucked at matchmaking. Hero and some of the others were determined to continue working on the Beatrice front, but Pedro had just lost… interest or confidence or something.

And then there was Balthazar, who seemed to be avoiding Pedro for some reason. When he’d seen Balthazar at lunch yesterday, it suddenly occurred to him that Balth hadn’t been around for a while. That wasn’t unusual. Balth sometimes hung out with other people or just by himself, and that was just how he was, but in that moment, Pedro realized how much he’d been missing his friend, so he gestured for him to come over.

But Balthazar just froze like a startled animal and stared at him for a few seconds, then turned and practically fled in the other direction.

Pedro had no idea why Balthazar would act that way, and if he was hoping for an explanation, he had yet to find one. Balthazar was very determinedly (and successfully) ignoring him, which in itself felt like a punch in the gut, and Ursula… Ursula knew something, but refused to say anything.

"If you don’t know already, I can’t tell you," she said. "It’s not for me to say." She looked sympathetic, but he knew Ursula. She was unmovable.

Pedro raked a hand through his hair. “What did I do, though?” he asked in desperation. “How did I screw up and what can I do to fix it?”

Ursula looked even more sympathetic, which really wasn’t helping. “I think you just need to give him some space for now.”

Pedro breathed out and leaned back against the nearest locker. “But I hate not doing anything. And… and I miss him.” His voice cracked. If he was trying to get Ursula to be less sorry for him, he was really going about it the wrong way.

She laid a hand on his arm. “I think it’ll work out,” she said, “I really do. You just need to give it some time, yeah?”

"Time, yeah," he echoed woodenly.

He felt devastated. Not in the way the word was generally used to mean just really disappointed, but actually obliterated, destroyed. Like his whole self-image, which had always felt pretty solid, could no longer hold its own weight.

He wasn’t sure he knew who he was without Balthazar.

The rest of the day passed, and plans were made. As he walked toward his car, he made one last-ditch effort. Yeah, Ursula said give him time, give him space, but Pedro was feeling desperate.

_Hey,_  (he texted) _haven’t seen you in a while. Ben and Claud are coming over, you should come too._

He hit send before he could convince himself it was a bad idea.

And he waited.


End file.
